the newts.net

Yes I’m afraid that the old boy’s put his beautiful Windermere cottage up for sale :0(

He’s in the process of buying another Spar shop in Torrisholme so he’s selling the beautiful Bowness Bay cottage to finance the deal and move to Torrisholme to be nearer the new shop. It’s great that he’s expanding and moving onwards and upwards, and I hope the new business will finance a lakeside residence with boat parking; either back in the bay or in the southern Spain, in the not too distant future! We will all miss this gorgeous cottage though, it’s sad to see it go.

If you’ve got a spare 600k though, you’ll find it here.

Local lad James Roberts new Image Editing service…

…Whether it’s repairs to damaged photographs, alterations to the subject, black and white -> colour and vice versa, special effects and even personalised greeting cards and gift ideas, you can check out some great examples of his work here, or click the pic above to visit his home page.

So late last night I was sat here reading the BBC news when I read this story about safety at work. Not very interesting, the strange thing was, after I read that I had a quick surf of steakandcheese.com to see if there were any decent new movie clips when I came across this:

Forklift Safety —> [8.02MB .wmv file]
It’s in German, but that doesn’t matter. Watch it right through, it’s very funny.

How ironic I thought.

Then just before bed I was listening to the Bob Dylan track ‘Blowing in the Wind’ while searching for Carly Simon’s ‘Nobody does it better’ from the James Bond movie ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ for an up and coming project. Once I’d got it, I checked my email before I headed for the sack and there was just one spam mail… Titled… ‘For Your Eye’s Only’.

I hit the sack before things got any weirder. Stuck the radio on to listen to the news and put me to sleep. Guess what was playing…

…The Bob Dylan track ‘Blowing in the Wind’!

Triple Spookiness!

Oh yes, It had to be done I’m afraid.

the newts enters the realms of 1000Kbps. 1 BIG PHAT MEG of broadband muscle to download that avaerage 3MB tune in literally seconds.

SWEET :0)

So just to test me new 1 MB connection out I thought a download or two was in order. The pick of which were:

Fur Coat —> [719KB - .wmv file]
Funny & clever. I played this tons of times to try and see the join!

Motorbike Stunts —> [2.25MB - .wmv file]
One cool dude with a feel for wheelies on his bike.

Motorbike Summersault —> [441KB - .wmv file]
A dirtbike does a twin summersault off jumps.

Well it’s a GIRL folks, and a huge and hearty “CONGRATULATIONS” goes out to Gaz and Suzi on the birth of their gorgeous new daughter. At present the baby remains nameless, but word out on the street is that ‘Jenna’ is the hot favourite!

Mama and Dadada.

Baby was born on Saturday 17th July 2004 at 10:16pm, weighing in at 7lb 6ozs. All bits and bobs are in full working order and where they should be and after a couple of days of monitoring, Baby should be home this Tuesday.

After an entire day of editing, cutting, pasting and adding sound tracks, my first attempt at video production is complete!

The video is of this years trip to Ladybower Reservoir and covers the 3 days of our fly fishing competition. Starring me, Gaz, Bov and Willie (and several trout), with footage from 2 different cameras, my Canon mvx10i and Gaz’s JVC. Filming by me and Gaz with a nice shaky bit in the middle courtesy of Bov.

It’s hardly an epic at 17 minutes long, but take my word for it, that’s long enough for your first attempt at production, especially using the editing software for the very first time. It was edited using Adobe Premiere 6.5, like all Adobe software it’s nigh on the industry standard and has features that I’ll only be finding out about sometime in distant future! Even so, the basics are fairly easy to grasp and that’s all I’ve used to produce this video. My thanks to Wez who gave me a brief tutorial on how to use Premiere and got me started. Wez produced his 5 minute movie ‘Playback’ for the local Meniscus Film Festival using Premiere so he’s a bit more familiar with it than I was. You can download Wez’s film here. (38.4MB - .ram file - Real Player required)

Anyway, enough plugging of Wez’s shoddy workmanship, it’s time to check out the newts’s masterpiece! Are you sittting down? Good because the file is HUGE :0( It’s been trimmed down as much as reasonably possible to make it downloadable but still watchable quality. I’m afraid its gonna be a 7 hour wait if you wanna download this film over a 56k connection. If you’re on 500k broadband it will be with you in 47 minutes, and if like me you’re on NTL’s 600k broadband you’ll be watching it within 39 minutes.

I called it ‘Escaping the Dragons in search of the Monsters’. I hope that needs no explaination!
It’s a .rm file so you’ll need Real Player to watch it. If you don’t have Real Player you can download it for free here.

Escaping the Dragons in search of the Monsters —> [171MB - .rm file]
[Right Click the link] —> [Save to Desktop]

If you’re a throwback from the ZX Spectrum days then you’re gonna love Rob Manuels creation Hey Hey 16k.

It’s a tune all about the pc’s of the day and there’s a host of games in there that will bring back a few memories I’ll tell you!

Just click this link a wallow in the glory of Manic Miner, Jet Pac and company!

The service was short and sweet, the barbeque was excellent and filling (thanks to chef for the day Gaz), the beer and wine were flowing and the company was exceptional.

Thanks to everyone for making it a fantastic day, even though we saw a wee bit of drizzley rain towards the end of the day.

Thanks to everyone for their generosity and lovely gifts that Ben received.

And a few pics…
Hover for description, click for BIGGY.

“Shit hot shot Bov!”

Picture courtesy of studio wez.

…and dies.

He goes to Hell where Satan is waiting for him.
“I don’t know what to do here, ” says the devil. “You’re on my list but I have no room for you, but you definitely have to stay here, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve got 3 people here who weren’t quite as bad as you. I’ll let one of them go, but you have to take their place. I’ll let you decide who leaves.”

George thought that sounded pretty good, so he agreed.

The devil opened the door to the first room. In it was Richard Nixon and a large pool of water. He kept diving in and surfacing empty handed over and over and over. Such was his fate in Hell.

“No!” said George. “I don’t think so. I’m not a good swimmer and don’t think I could do that all day long.”

The devil led him to the next room. In it was Tony Blair with a sledge hammer and a room full of rocks. All he did was swing the hammer time after time after time.

“No! I’ve got this problem with my shoulder. I would be in constant agony if all I could do was break rocks all day!” commented George.

The devil moved on to the third door. In it George saw Bill Clinton lying naked on the floor with his arms behind his head and his legs staked in spread eagle pose. Bent over was Monica Lewinsky, doing what she does best!

George Bush looked in disbelief and couldn’t believe his luck. “Yeah I can handle this.” he says.

Read more

A veteran of the Gulf War replies to an advert for a position as a Civil Servant. He attends government house for his interview…

The interviewer asks him, “So it says here you are a veteran?”
“Yes I served two tours in the Gulf.”
“Good, that counts in your favour. Do you have any service-related disabilities?”
“I am 100% disabled. A mortar round blew off both my testicles so they declared me disabled and honourably discharged me. It doesn’t affect my ability to work though.”

“Sorry to hear about the damage, but I have some good news for you. We are happy with your application and you can start tomorrow! Our hours of work are 8am - 4pm. Come in about 10am and we’ll get you started.”

“That’s fantastic, thankyou. But if the hours are 8 til 4 why do you want me to come in at 10?”

Read more

Just before the England Vs. Scotland game at the next World Cup…

Rooney goes into the English changing room to find all his team mates looking a bit glum. “What’s up?” he asks. “Well, we’re having trouble getting motivated for this game. We know it’s important but it’s only Scotland. They’re crap and we can’t be bothered” says Beckham.
Rooney looks at them and says “Well, I reckon I can beat them single handed. You lads have the afternoon off and watch the game from the pub.”
So Rooney goes out to play Scotland all by himself and the rest of the squad nip off to the pub for a few pints. After a few jars they wonder how the game is going so they get the landlord to stick the teletext on. A big cheer goes up as the screen reads England 1 - Scotland 0 (Rooney 10 minutes). He’s beating Scotland all by himslf! Anyway, a few more pints of lager later and Cole shouts out “It must be full time now, let’s see how he got on”.

They put the teletext on…

England 1 (Rooney 10 minutes) - Scotland 1 (Angus McShite 89 minutes)

They can’t believe it, Rooney has single handedly got a draw aginst the entire Scotland team!

They all rush back to the stadium to congratulate him. They find him in the dressing room, still in his kit, sat sobbing with his head in his hands. He refuses to look at them.

“Sorry lads, I’ve let you down, I’ve let you all down” said Rooney. “Don’t be daft, you got a draw against Scotland all by yourself, AND they only scored in the 89th minute!” replied Beckham.

“No, no, I HAVE let you down” says Rooney. . .

Read more

Fed up with Internet Explorer and it’s security shortcomings? Fed up with patch this, upgrade that, security fix the other?… Then why not try something different.

If you have 3 or 4 minutes spare, please click the text below and read the article. And remember, as it says, spread the word!…

The time has come to dump Internet Explorer. I know, I know, - you may have heard the same thing before from those that think it’s cool to hate Microsoft; but I’m not one of those guys. I’m actually an MCSE and I happen to like quite a few of Microsoft’s products. Rather than lump me into the Microsoft-basher category, consider for a moment why you use the browser you use, and humor me by entertaining the notion - if even for a second - that switching to another might be worth your while.

My argument is simple: the benefits of using IE are too few - and the faults too great - to put off the adoption of an alternative any longer.

Micro$oft’s arch nemesis Wesley Brahhhn comes round and installs Mozillas FIREFOX browser on my pc. And it’s pretty damn nice.

I’ve used Opera (after another enforced Wez install!) which was feature rich but I did experience some problems displaying various sites correctly (including the newts). It’s quite different to I.E. and so there’s somewhat of a learning curve involved. I did continue to use it though, usually in conjunction with I.E.

The latest release of Mozilla’s FIREFOX browser however looks very nice indeed. Secure, stable, customisable and feature rich while retaining interface similarities to I.E. which makes it feel instantly familiar. There’s a lot of features which I’m only just discovering myself but already I like. So much so I may even consider uninstalling I.E. Not an easy task apparently, but with the plethora of information and guides on the net I’m sure its achievable with a little research.

Another bonus was Mozilla’s email client THUNDERBIRD. While Micro$oft’s Outlook Express is functional and familiar, it lacks a decent inbuilt spam filter. My copy also lacked audio email notification, not through a lack of trying everything to resolve the problem, and also suffered run time errors every now and again. So happy with Firefox I thought I’d give Thunderbird a go. Quality. Or Kerrrrwality as Wez likes to think. Again it has a familiar feel to it so it seems easy to learn, it looks pretty and the inbuilt spam filter… Like Lightening! Far better than several third party spam filters I’ve tagged on to O.E. But best of all it DINGS when I get an email. Oh how I’ve missed my ding :0)) Seriously, like Firefox it’s great. Try it.

“There is no reason for people to subject themselves to the loopholes, backdoors, oversights and other shortcomings that accompany Internet Explorer and the equally reprehensible Outlook Express,” said ConsumerAffairs.Com president James R. Hood.

The other thing I like about Mozilla’s operation is that it’s Open Source.
Unlike the secrecy involved in any Micro$oft software, Mozilla is developed openly by thousands of users and developers who know what the user wants. Mainly because they ARE the user. Not only is Mozilla’s software free, the code is there for you to look at and should you wish, add to and develop further. Not that I would, It’s just nice to know I could! Unlike the veil of smoke that shrouds Micro$oft’s software and source code. Oh and their bugs, errors and security shortfalls!

Firefox Press Release.

So if you fancy a change from the usual hum drum of Internet Explorer and / or Outlook Express then why not give the folks at Mozilla a look in:

Mozilla site where you can read reviews, specs and download Firefox and Thunderbird amongst other zilla titles.

Alternatively, you could just take my word for it and download them right here right now.
[Right Click the icon then Save to Desktop]

(These are Windows operating system downloads. For Mac or Linux click here.)

—> Firefox 0.9.1 [4.72MB .exe file]

—> Thunderbird 0.7.1 [5.90MB .exe file]

…Hits the big 10!

Yep, 10 months old today and just 8 weeks away from the BIG ONE!. Christening next Sunday 11th July followed by champagne garden party barbeque bash :0)

Just thought I’d let you all know what a fantastic night out we all had in Blackpool for Beckie’s Hen Night. Had such a laugh with everyone never done so much drinking, dancing and laughing. Would like to thank Jo for being such a great little sis and roomy, Julie for organising the fab event and Beckie for inviting me and Jo and being such a good laugh!! Hope John and Beckie have a fantastic wedding day see ya all later ……Rach x

Pics: Click for bigginess